A FAMILY were hoping to have gas restored to their Huddersfield home today – after a week in freezing temperatures.

The Hallas family have resorted to wearing coats and gloves inside their Shelley home as temperatures again dropped below freezing.

And they claimed they had been given no information by Northern Gas Networks, who cut off the supply.

Engineers dug a hole outside the family’s Park Drive home on December 29 – a week after they had first reported smelling gas.

They then cut off the supply but did not inform the family.

Since then, there has been no hot water or heating to the house and only limited cooking facilities.

It was only after the Examiner contacted Northern that engineers were assigned to the work.

Mrs Collette Hallas said: “All they have told us is that there are problems with many of the pipes due to the bad weather.

“There has been no sign of the pipework being fixed and myself, my husband Richard and our children Francesca, 18, and Chris, 15, are freezing in the house.

“We first smelled gas on December 23 and engineers came out and assured us everything was safe. We were okay through Christmas but then on December 29, the smell got worse.

“We have managed to borrow portable heaters from neighbours but have had no hot water. I have been ringing every day but no-one has told me what is happening about the supply.”

A Northern Gas spokesman said: “We would like to apologise for the delay in carrying out this work, it is not our usual standard of service – we are currently experiencing unprecedented levels of gas emergency calls.

“We visited a number of times between December 23 and January 4 to investigate and carry out safety checks after calls reporting the smell of gas. It was during a visit on December 29 that we recorded gas readings close to the property.

“The gas supply was turned off just before midnight as a safety precaution

“We scheduled a team to re-lay the gas service pipe to the property yesterday and hoped to re-connect the house during the night.

“As mentioned, we are currently experiencing unprecedented levels of gas emergency calls.

“We have to treat these calls as our first priority as there could be real danger we have to deal with.

“Unfortunately this means that other priority jobs cannot be dealt with as quickly as we normally would. We are very sorry for this and would like to apologise to anyone who is affected.

“We have mobilised as many gas engineers to deal with these emergencies as we can source, this includes mobilising people who have emergency engineering experience but whom are currently doing office jobs.

“Additionally, we have recruited engineers from our contractor partners and are actively seeking more from other sources.

“We ask people to be good neighbours during this challenging time.”